


Temporary Cures

by burglebezzlement



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Black Badge, Dolls backstory, Dolls' little monster problem, Extra Trick, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, ToT: Chocolate Box, ToT: Monster Mash, mentions of vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-22 03:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8270852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Dolls has escaped from the Black Badge Division with his little monster problem intact. Unfortunately, the cure’s almost as bad as the disease… and he’s going to need Doc Holliday’s help.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labocat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/gifts).



> Happy Trick or Treat!

Doc peers down into the blender. “Are you sure this is the right number of snake hearts?”

“There shouldn’t be any —” Dolls tries to sit up, but he’s aching all over, a deep ache inside his bones and a feeling of deep malaise in his muscles. “There aren’t any snake hearts in the recipe.”

 “I know that,” Doc says. He looks at the inside of the blender again and then puts the top on, gingerly, before poking one finger at a button. “Wanted to make sure you were still with us,” he shouts over the noise of the blender.

“You said you knew how to do this.”

“I said I was a doctor. To humans. And teeth.” Doc hits the stop button on the blender, opens the top, and starts coughing as the dust rises up. “Did I ever tell you I used to make my own gunpowder?”

* * *

Dolls has been rescued from Black Badge, courtesy of Wynonna Earp and a dishonorable discharge.

He’s still processing the discharge, even though he knows he’s been heading that way since the moment he survived Kandahar. Lucado was always going to have it in for him after that. He’s lucky he’s shivering on his couch, instead of shivering in a Black Badge containment facility.

And he’s lucky he made backup plans, that time when the regular delivery of the Black Badge medicine fell through because Lucado decided to fuck with him. Lucky that there’s more than one option for him. More than one way to tame the beast. 

The Black Badge option is like charming the monster back to sleep — a moment or two of pain, and then a feeling of relief. This — the potion, the treatment, the whatever-it-is that Doc’s assembling for him right now, which took special orders from three herbal suppliers who only take orders over the internet, a gemological supply store, and an Amazon seller in Brazil who specializes in rare insects — this is more like hunting down the monster with an Acme-brand sledgehammer, hitting it over the head, and hoping for the best.

Better than nothing. Worse than most.

* * *

Doc’s into the brewing part of the process. The apartment stinks like rotting henbane and spoiled vinegar.

Every time Dolls shuts his eyes, scenes from Black Badge containment play out in his mind. Demons and worse, in the containment cells with him, looking at him through inhuman eyes.

 _I’m still human_ , he told them, and they didn’t listen. 

He keeps his eyes open, now. 

“Why’d you choose me to help you?” Doc asks, from the stove. He’s leaning back against the counter, wooden spoon in hand. “Instead of Wynonna.”

Dolls wipes sweat off his forehead and tries to move to look at Doc. “Didn’t want her to see me —” He coughs, deep, his vocal cords trying to shift. “Didn’t want her to see me like this.”

* * *

Dolls’ mother is the one who found the treatment.

There are a lot of places to go for medical help when your four-year-old starts getting sick the normal way. When that sickness makes his eyes go orange and glowing, morphs the pupils into cat-slits? You’ve got fewer options.

The option Dolls’ mother found was Abuela. 

Abuela was too young to be a grandmother. When Dolls got older, he figured the title went with the house, a run-down adobe in a bad part of Phoenix with gardens out back. Enormous gardens, full of plants little 4-year-old Xavier had never heard of. It would have looked like something out of a fairy tale if it hadn’t been for the car wrecking yard next door. 

When his mother brought Xavier there for the first time, Abuela looked in his eyes with a flashlight and asked him a few questions, and then let him outside to go play in the garden while they watched from the patio.

“Isn’t it dangerous?” Xavier’s mother asked. “He might try to eat one of your plants.”

“Not much that is dangerous to someone like him,” Abuela said.

* * *

“Say what you will for Black Badge,” Dolls says. “You can’t beat the healthcare.”

Doc doesn’t look up, just keeps his head down as he adds the sulfur to the mixture on the stove.

* * *

Dolls still isn’t sure how Black Badge found out about him, to recruit him to their ranks.

Maybe Abuela, although he thinks better of her than that. She’d been brewing the cure for him for years by then. All through elementary and middle and high school, Dolls had to take time off from school and activities to spend a day or two being sick as a dog, knowing he’d have to do it over again. Dolls’ mother told the school he had cyclic vomiting syndrome to explain all his absences. 

No, Dolls figures it’s more likely Black Badge knew what he’d be — how, he’s not sure. Something in his family history. Something in his school tests. 

However they found him, they did. And they told him there was a better way — a cure. A place where his powers would be controlled, instead of beaten down by Abuela’s temporary treatments. A place where his powers could be used. Where he could help people. Fight the other monsters. 

Being in Black Badge worked so well for him, until it didn’t.

And now he’s out, without even a job, unless whoever ends up owning Shorty’s needs a bouncer or Nedley needs another deputy.

* * *

“Up and at ‘em,” Doc says. “One monster cure, as requested.”

“It’s not a cure,” Dolls says. What he has doesn’t have a cure. Just temporary treatments.

He fights his way up from the couch, against aching muscles, against the wave of nausea that hits him when he’s upright. _Some use you’d be to Wynonna like this._

“Sometimes kicking it down the road is the best you can do,” Doc says, philosophically.

He goes to hand Dolls the treatment, but Dolls puts up his hand. “Wait.”

“You going to thank me?” Doc says.

“I’m going to tell you I need a bowl,” Dolls says. “Basin. Whatever. Unless you want any vomiting I do to be on you.”

Doc steps back, and then grabs one of the dirty bowls from the sink. It’s still got the dregs of the sulfur in it, but Dolls figures it doesn’t matter. 

Doc hands him the stuff again. It’s in one of Dolls’ mugs — the one that says Certified Bad-Ass. Waverly Earp gave it to him for belated Christmas, once they got him back from Black Badge.

It’s also smoking, slightly.

“Here goes nothing,” Dolls says, and knocks it back. Only way to take the stuff: straight back, trying to keep it off your tongue as much as possible. Trying not to taste it. It hits his stomach and there it is, the familiar twist, the rising gorge in his throat. He can feel sweat breaking out across his forehead, running down the small of his back.

“You don’t look so good, partner,” Doc says, and Dolls laughs, and it’s the uneven, inhuman laugh as the monster tries to fight itself back out.

Doc helps lower him to the couch, and Dolls curls up around a pillow, feeling the sweat pour off him. He starts retching — he remembers this, from so many times as a child. The retching, and then the sleep.

* * *

When he wakes, Doc’s sitting next to him in the recliner. He’s holding the remote on his lap like it’s a gun. On the widescreen, horses are migrating across a wide plain while a narrator talks about free-roaming mustangs.

“Thought —” Dolls coughs. “Thought you would have gone for a Western.”

“These horses are prettier,” Doc says. “So you’re back among the living.”

 _More or less_ , Dolls thinks. He tries to move. Carefully. The back of his head feels like someone hit him with a garbage can lid.

Black Badge spoiled him, with their treatments — a few moments of pain, and there, the monster dialed back to whatever level you choose. Whatever percentage of monster the Black Badge needed him to be, that week.

This treatment, though. This rips the monster out of him, only leaving the roots it will grow back from. Dolls had forgotten how weak it makes him feel. How human. 

He gets up from the couch, carefully, and goes to the sink. He rinses water in his mouth and spits. The sink’s still full of the dirty dishes and labware from Doc’s brewing.

Dolls takes a Gatorade from the fridge and sits back down on the couch, letting his head flop back against the wall.

Doc looks over. “You need help opening that, friend?”

Dolls shakes his head and cracks open the Gatorade. It’s much harder to open than he remembers. He takes a slow sip, letting the liquid trickle into his stomach. Waiting to see if it stays down.

“Why did you stay?” he asks.

Doc looks back to the screen. The mustangs are play-fighting. “What kind of doctor would I be if I left my patients alone?”

“You were a dentist.” Dolls takes another cautious sip of the Gatorade. It’s staying down.

“I was a lot of things.” Doc doesn’t look over. “And I’ve been on a sick bed or two in my day.”

Dolls leans back and thinks about what Wynonna told him. Doc Holliday, who became the best shot in the West because his consumption made him too weak to fight. Who made a deal with a witch so he could stay with Wyatt Earp.

Maybe Doc does know what it’s like.

“Thanks,” Dolls says, eventually, after he’s finished the Gatorade and the show on mustangs has slid into a show about badly-behaved horses. Leave it to Doc to find a marathon of horse-related programming on a TV Dolls didn’t even know got Animal Planet.

Doc tips his hat. “Any time.”

They watch for a while longer. 

“I saw you,” Doc says, finally. He looks over at Dolls. “In that bar. You took down fifteen Revenants on your own, and I still don’t know what you are.”

Dolls smiles. “Good.”


End file.
